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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Homelessness in Verra - Will Ashes have enough Player Housing?
Jahlon
Member, Intrepid Pack, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
So last week when Intrepid did their monthly livestream they had a very good question in the Q&A. It had to do with the ease of accessibility of freeholds. I think a lot of the player base was expecting that freeholds would be relatively easy to acquire, but from Steven’s comment it does seem like they may be a bit hard to acquire. I think this is going to cause a little controversy, especially since they sell cosmetic cash ship skins for freeholds. I also think we may have an issue with who can become citizens early in the game, where only the super rich or super lucky get to become citizens and leadership in Stage 3 nodes.
https://youtu.be/qgybRS8Upjc
https://youtu.be/qgybRS8Upjc 
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Comments
Player housing over all should be ok with apartments and in town housing.
People should temper their expectations with this.
Seems like they said this way back during Kickstarter as well.
I understand the desire for it be an accomplishment and to be earned but it honestly doesn't matter much to me if I have a house in-game as there will be plenty of options for players who cant afford them (such as the apartments). Being part of the node/vassals to interact socially in provides a great dynamic to the games design.
The free holds are neat with how diverse they can be in purpose and design, so having them relatively limited is not a bad choice in my opinion. If players were allowed to throw them up quite easily it could turn into SWG ghost towns.
Based on the skins they're selling in the store, not all of them are equal per se in what they can do and their purpose which adds a lot of flavour to the game. If too much of the land becomes available for them, they also take away from the world.
I will say I'm curious to find out more about the limitations around them such as how many per node? spacing between them, how close to the civilisation do they have to be to reduce impact on the world design for questing etc.
Considering the goal is 10k active players per server, 115-ish nodes, I would imagine it would quite low on the ratio. As a guess, maybe 1000 globally available?
Be interesting to auction off inactive housing plots from inactive accounts over X amount time range or if they just become available. either or sounds interesting.
Find a level 2 node and work on it to get it to level three. Lots of the big guilds will be trying to get a node up to metro as fast as possible, so perhaps choose one nearby to push to 3, you will probably pick up some levelling from those working on the big node.
Or, conversely, take part in attacks on nodes to de-level them. Then you can work to re-level them and grab housing when they ding to three.
It is all a part of the excellent motivations built into this brilliant game design.
I remember the discussion about being able to pillage free holds after a successful siege of a node being a hot topic regardless of the free holds losing items or just the attackers gaining rewards for the additional collateral damage post victory within the time frame.
If nodes set back to 0 after an attack, I suppose that would imply the free holds demolished as well.
The freeholds are not demolished. They have a 2 hour window after a successful siege where the normal pvp protections do not apply and they can be attacked and damaged/destroyed. If they are successfully defended by the owners and their friends, then they have a one week cooldown to find a new allowance to stay in that zoi, if there is no other node of at least level 3 whose zoi covers it, it goes poof, and is mailed to the owner to place somewhere else. A portion of a nodes "stuff" is sunk when they lose, the same will probably apply to freeholds that don't survive.
true, they dont lose their skins or free hold as an item per se, just the placement for it. I was implying in the event the attackers were successful and the node returning to phase/state 0. I wasn't aware if it was part of a vassal system that it would protect it as that would imply that state 0 nodes are covered in the vassal system which is interesting. It was never implied that items within the free hold were lost with the loss of it. I imagined one would go to some sort of vendor/npc/shop/bank to reacquire lost assets.
To me, it just makes more sense to wipe everything off of it in the event of a loss. go re-acquire assets at the any bank or vendor/npc that handles that stuff. But I can see how having to manually move the items vs them being transported automatically could be less immersive but that depends on shared inventory between locations being a thing or not unless they're giving additional storage means to said housing aside from personal storage shared storage?
Do you recall how long the node will be unavailable during the reset phase?
IE: siege event ends = zone available for play X amount of time after? It's been awhile
is it unavailable until weekly server reset? maintenance patch day?
If the node destroyed shares borders with different vassal networks opposing each other per se, do those remaining freeholds then tie in with the victors or the previous network? what benefits would that produce for both sides vs vassal network allocation system issues? does it come down to the strength of the vassal network? if the winning side gets to reclaim it automatically due network strength, doesn't that take away from the victories purpose?
Technically, those freeholds wouldn't be a citizen to that node as it's destroyed but they would be a citizen to the vassal network? does that mean anyone in the network can place a free hold anywhere as they're part of a wider citizenship network? If that network get's overtaken due to a lvl 5 losing and a new one surfacing, then they can place it anywhere in the newly established network?
With how vassal networks can change hands so easily, seems relatively problematic lol
A nodes zoi extends to cover lower nodes even zero, ones, and twos. I would have to recheck, but the vassal system does not take that into account since a level 3 is the lowest form of player government. So, a node is blasted back to zero, the surrounding nodes that were being locked out from that node being higher are now free to advance. Zoi from all nodes is affected and restructured to fit the new dynamic. If a level 3 or higher node's zoi extends into that newly created level zero, what the player would have to do is travel to that node, buy the permission to place a freehold, which would then be applied to their current one. And so on down the line. If there are no other nodes 3 or higher whose zoi covers the freehold within a week (I am pulling the week from memory, might have to check that timeline) they lose the spot, freehold and stuff is packed up and mailed to them.
Remember, the more placement permissions a node has sold/granted the higher the initial cost and taxes paid on that freehold. So while they may have gotten in early in their original node, the new zoi that covers it may not be worth the cost to buy the permission if it is from a nodes where the cost and taxes are up there. And as always, housing is prone to the same changes as any other system and mechanic during development. This is all based off of previous statements and discussions. If they find something does not work, they will change it.
That sounds about right from what I remember and from the simulation they provided showing all the ZOI's and how they connect through the vassal network. Wasn't too sure on the free hold and zone of influence conditions regardless of vassal network. The ZOI directly affects said specific node and not necessarily its vassal as they have their own ZOI which has their limitations and conditions for node level rule sets based on neighbouring ZOI's.
I wonder if they'll add in additional benefits and bonuses to sticking around to wipe more free holds off the map post siege such as increased siege rating and bonus loot They probably wont be overly strong to hold off raiders let alone the amount of manpower to defend one regardless of the time period provided post siege or phase 2 of node siege.
I also am curious about how losses are going to directly affect commodities held at the freeholds. Does the owner lose a percentile of commodities randomly selected post destruction? Are attackers rewarded in the ticket/token exchange with additional pvp rating etc. IIRC, there was limitations going to be put in place the prevent nodes from re-allocating resources to prevent players from just packing stuff up and moving it during the nodes siege declaration phase?
As a side node, if they made it so that the free hold raiding was an event where it tied them all in together where if a certain percentile was destroyed then all in the ZOI would lost Y% of resources and wipe them all off the node post event as the node resets. Not thoroughly thought out for an example but just an idea. Then the additional bonuses are pooled and penalised from the attackers and defenders as a whole.
But I can definitely see the appeal to having the remaining free holds stick around to pack up their shit and go, lol. Node development pacing to get back to level 3 can also play a big role in that as well assuming they have the fee's to repay for the land if that is the case.
@Enigmatic Sage
Doubt you will see that happen on a zoi wide stage. Say you have a metro that has a huge zoi. People have bought their permissions from the metro to place, but have placed in level 3 or 4 on the outer edge of the metros zoi, miles away from the actual metro node.They should get their freeholds wiped even though they are nowhere near the center of conflict? (and after, all they have to do is buy placement permission at whatever rate from those overlapping zois) Nah, they will probably be safe, while those closest to the action of the siege will get burned and pillaged. As of right now it is a two hour window, and Verra is huge, most wont go 30 minutes just to find a possible freehold 2 nodes over that might be vulnerable due to where they purchased their placement permission. Of course, people hold grudges, and server rep is important. So if everyone knows that Stinky Wizzleteats freehold is connected to Metro X and it goes poof, they might make a beeline for it.
lol, no dude.
I'm talking about the ones as part of the ZOI not the vassal network of ZOI's. The ZOI being specific to the node that underwent the siege event.
If someone is buying the land deed for their freehold to be part of said node within its ZOI (not vassal network) then they could hypothetically do that. IIRC there was mention of potentially having something a long those lines as it was indecisive at the time on how they would tie into that because I definitely recall conversations about people not wanting their freeholds to become raided post siege loss. Depending how the node sieges play out, there could be a few hundred players in the area anyways. If they turn that to open world content outside of the instance, then they could potentially run into an issue where too players are concentrated exceeding what the siege instance and open world could handle.
Example:
say it's a level 4 node and they have 100 free holds currently within its borders of said node. The node loses the siege, a second event begins within same instance where players then raid the freeholds and the free holds part of that node are able to become raided/destroyed.
I'm not talking about if the participant has a free hold at a level 3 node nearby within the vassal network that would become collateral damage
No, players travelling will see the barrier around the node where the event is occurring. Only those who are participating can pass through it. AFAIK, that has not changed much. The events take place in the "open world". IIRC, players who try to pass through the barrier who are not part of the siege will die.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Sieges
@Enigmatic Sage
So this is my understanding of how the process for placing a freehold works. A person can go to a node settlement city center (mayor's office). While there they can purchase permission to place a freehold within that particular settlements zoi. The cost of these permissions and the base tax rate on the freehold is based on how many of those permissions have been previously sold in the node. Get in early, when the node is "young", and get a cheaper initial buy-in and a cheaper base tax rate to be paid. Your taxes on that freehold get paid to that particular node. You can also opt for citizenship in that node now that you own property in it's zoi. (as long as you don't have citizenship anywhere else of course). You can then go out and survey various parts of the land that fall under the zoi of that node.
Zoi is not a node border. Zoi is dynamic and changes and shifts based on the level of the node, terrain, and other factors they have described. So you could indeed find a place to put your freehold that is in a nearby node, that is under the zoi of the purchased node, but is not that node. The higher the level of the node, the larger its zoi. So much so that a metro's zoi will cover roughly 20% of the map, just like the set taxation area for pvp castles. So, you could buy your permission from the metro node, and place anywhere within that 20% of the map it's zoi covers. Said node is blasted back to zero (monumental effort) and all those people with permissions from that used to be metro will now need to find themselves under the zoi of a level 3 or higher node. Get to that node office and buy a new placement permission, and apply it to their freehold within the grace period following the siege if they survive the 2 hour window. This example picture from the wiki may illustrate my mental imagery on this.
Up to one fifth of the world will be encompassed within the ZOI of a Metropolis. The many vassal nodes within a ZOI's "border" could end up looking like a country or nation.[9]
Yeah, I found that "conceptual" design with the overlapping circles a bit misleading per se. The ZOI within the border surrounding the node directly relate to one and another. I believe a majority of the ZOI expansion is relating to the advancements and progression limitations of neighbouring ZOI's and their vassal network.
I've read the wiki page too
One part suggests something similar to the conceptual design you presented but states it COULD end up looking like an entire country or nation. This also suggests that the vassal network and the borders for each individual ZOI amalgamate/connect but each ZOI and their nodes still act individually per se in their progression.
They put many designs under the same colloquial term for different systems that work together which makes discussing certain things relatively controversial. Because if the main node (in this scenario a metropolis) falls, then it's a race for the level 5's to advance to a 6 which completely changes the ZOI/Vassal network which causes those freehold rule sets to have a grey zone in what we are discussing. It then splits it into several smaller empires for their nodes and vassals.
As stated, I was talking about the ones directly connected to the node undergoing the siege not indirectly with the vassal network. I can see how having sieges set once a month on a specific date/time helps mitigate some issues from occurring but there seems to be grey zones still in rule sets for such things.
I can see how having a node go from 0 to 3 within a week roughly could allow the remaining free holds to stay but with the explanation of the ZOI's amalgamating, would that not just contradict the purpose of several systems over lapping across the amalgamated ZOI vassal network?
So that's relatively what leads me to discuss direct and indirect risk vs rewards in the design relating to while suggesting the possibility for the phase two post siege scenario that could occur in wiping the node clean as setting back to phase 0 would potentially imply regardless of where the next civilisation could occur depending on the geographical lay out of said node and its ZOI.
Freeholds, whilst great in idea, de-centralizing player activity out of the cities. For cities, and especially metropolis to thrive, they need not only the grandeur of size but also active players within.
Work the freehold system to be more integrated with cities. Bring people to the cities, have the active there.
That is a grand motivation for living in the city.
sounds like they don't know for sure as they're working out the specifics